Corporations are largely controlled by their shareholders. In many cases, Blackrock, State Street or Vanguard control those shares on behalf of their investors. They’re the ones who control who is on the boards, and the boards control who is in the C-suites.

The reason that so many corporations focus on maximizing profits over everything else is that it’s what’s demanded by the boards, who are appointed by the shareholders, who are largely represented by Blackrock, State Street and Vanguard. Any human impulse to have a company care about the environment or about its employees is basically nullified by this process where the institutional investors only want the key numbers to go up. In some cases the shares are owned by pension funds who represent teachers who care a lot about the world, enough that they take a relatively low paying job that requires a lot of work. But, those teachers want to be able to retire some day, and so they want their pensions to grow big, so they want the companies in those pensions to make profits. By the time an individual kindergarten teacher’s desires filter up from herself to her union to her pension to the institutional investor to the board to the CEO, the only message that gets through is “more profits”. Alongside those teachers are a lot of very rich people who treat money like a high score, and just want the number to go up.

It’s true that a lot of people in C-suites lack empathy. But, they’re kept in place by boards who are appointed by huge institutional investment firms who represent shareholders who care only about profit. But, also, the current system doesn’t really allow for messages other than “more profits” to filter through to these companies.

The corporation isn’t a sentient creature, it’s just a group of people, and those people respond to the stimulus that comes from their owners. The only real message getting through is “more profits”, so that’s the focus of the corporations.